The Lost Plot

by Genevieve Cogman

  He tossed her back a notepad and pencil-stub while managing the cab one-handed. Irene gritted her teeth and scribbled Jeanette Smith. “For anyone in particular?” she asked.

  “It’s for my daughter. See, I’m always telling her that women can get ahead in this world—”

  “Hold it a moment,” Irene directed. She could hear sirens in the distance. She fished out several bills from her now-depleted handbag and passed them over with the autograph. “I’ll jump out; then you keep on going—and keep the cops following you for as long as possible. Tell them whatever you want when they catch up. Okay?”

  “You got it. I’ll drop you at the next corner; the library’s two blocks straight from there.”

  “Good man.” Irene braced herself to move.

  Ten seconds later she was on the sidewalk and blending in behind some office workers while the cab raced on. The police followed about half a minute later, snarling up the traffic as they claimed the right of way, forcing other cars to the sides of the street.

  Irene took a moment to catch her breath. The streets here weren’t as busy as the ones she’d left, which meant less potential cover to reach the New York Public Library. And the streets were wider. On either side the buildings reared up like cliff faces, as smooth as fractured mica. At street level there were shop signs, restaurant signs, people going in and out, lights, noise, action—but above her, the whole of New York seemed to be watching.

  There wasn’t time for a complete costume change—the police, the mobs, and Hu’s men were too close behind her. She needed some way to hide. She needed divine inspiration. She needed a miracle.

  The raucous noise of a brass band and stamping feet became audible even through the squealing of tyres and blaring of car horns. On the opposite side of the street a group was marching, banners raised and heads held high. The slogans on their signs declared VOTE DRY, ALCOHOL IS POISON, LIPS THAT TOUCH LIQUOR SHALL NEVER TOUCH MINE, and similar sentiments.

  For a moment Irene wondered if this was just a little too convenient. Coincidences like this might occur in a high-chaos world, but were less likely elsewhere. But the papers had warned of temperance marches across the city today. It was ideal.

  She made her way across the street and folded herself into the rear of the column. She bowed her head, trying for an expression of sincere devotion to the Cause. Other pedestrians were either pausing to mock the group or avoiding even looking at them. And at this moment, that was precisely what Irene wanted. She opened and closed her mouth in time to the hymn the marchers were singing and hummed along with the chorus.

  The sun was setting in the distance in a triumphant glow of reds and oranges as the march drew to a stuttering halt in front of one large building—not too far from her destination. Several of the more muscular-looking women quickly assembled a makeshift podium from planks and boxes that they’d been carrying. There were clear class divisions among the protesters: the upper-class ones stood back and gave the orders, while the lower-class ones did the actual work. Some things didn’t change, no matter how many worlds you visited.

  A couple of police cars rattled by, but to Irene’s relief they didn’t stop.

  But before she could make a break for the library, a hand tapped her shoulder. “Haven’t seen you here before,” the woman next to her said.

  “I don’t recognize you either,” Irene answered, smiling pleasantly as she assessed the other woman. She was neatly and smartly dressed, but not expensively, and she was wearing glossily buckled high heels rather than something that would have been comfortable to walk in. “Do you work near here?” she guessed.

  “I’m a legal secretary at Sallust and Floddens,” the woman said, offering Irene her hand to shake. “Lina Johnson. Pleased to meet you. Love the coat. You’re English?”

  “I can’t really hide it,” Irene admitted. She ran through her mental list of aliases. If the name “Rosalie” had made it into the newspapers, it would be unsafe to use it. “Clarice Backson,” she said, falling back on an earlier pseudonym. At least she should be safe from any dragons recognizing it. “On holiday from England. When I saw the march, I felt I had to join in. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? I should think not!” another woman chimed in. “If more women were willing to stand up for their beliefs, we’d have a better America. We need more citizens like you.”

  There were approving nods around her. Irene was just congratulating herself on her blending skills when she recognized a couple of George the Dude’s men approaching. And they were looking at the women.

  “Perhaps you’d tell me about how you’re operating here,” she said to her questioners, turning her back to the mobsters. “Give me some suggestions I can take back home.”

  The ensuing surge of comments meant that she could keep silent, hiding her telltale English accent as the mobsters passed. But her throat was dry with nerves. The worst thing was being so close to the New York Public Library. Having her goal within sight made it that much harder to hold her position. She hoped Kai and Evariste were having an easier time.

  “You ought to be one of the speakers,” Lina Johnson suggested. “You could tell us how our British sisters are fighting the good fight!”

  “Oh no,” Irene said quickly. “I’m not a good public speaker.”

  But the idea had unfortunately caught on. “You just need to speak from the heart, Miss Backson,” another woman said firmly. “Stand up there and tell them God’s own truth.”

  “No, really, I couldn’t possibly . . .” Irene said. It wasn’t working. She was being shoved through the crowd by her admirers, towards the podium. Strong-minded women with a cause accepted even fewer excuses than the average gangster when it came to getting what they wanted, and what they wanted right now was Irene making a speech. “I don’t think . . .”

  Then she saw the gangsters coming back towards the group of marchers. And Hu was with them.

  Irene rapidly reassessed her possible options: she was out of time and out of luck. Her best option now was stalling for any delay she could gain.

  “. . . but if you say so, I suppose I could try,” she said, and let herself be pushed forward.

  Irene took a deep breath and stepped up as the previous speaker stepped down. She was only a couple of feet off the ground, but the sea of faces looking up at her in the sunset light made her stomach swim with vertigo. Or perhaps that was just stage-fright. Now that she had a better point of view, she could see more of George’s men—looking dangerously alert.

  They hadn’t noticed her yet. Oh well, Irene decided, she might as well make this last for as long as possible.

  “Brothers and sisters,” she began, and saw Hu’s head jerk round in her direction. “We are marching to fight a demon, and that demon is alcohol.” She took a deep breath, raising her voice. “Some of you may never have visited England. Some of you may think of it as a distant homeland, an old motherland that can do no wrong. But my country—the land of my birth—is cursed by alcohol.”

  She turned from side to side, making eye contact with members of the audience. “You may laugh. But you haven’t seen English gin palaces! Gilded constructions of glass and iron, where the bartenders dole out glasses of ruinously strong pure gin to all comers! I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. And then I’ve walked outside and seen the drunks slumped in the gutters, begging for one more glass of the vicious liquid! From the highest to the lowest, the richest to the poorest, alcohol is stamped on the face of England like a festering sore. The Members of Parliament are served fine wines in the very House where they debate the law!” She paused, and to her surprise received a few cheers. “The poor mother in her garret watches her husband go out to drink away their savings! When he comes back late at night, staggering and blind-drunk, he responds to her pitiful pleas for household money with blows and curses!”

  The gangsters were spreading out in a rough circle now
, loosely spaced around the podium to block any escape. Hu nodded at her in a friendly manner, then raised his watch and tapped at it, in the traditional gesture for Hurry up and finish.

  Which was the last thing that Irene intended to do. “Let me tell you about the depravity, the debauchery, of the rich and famous of England,” she declared into a sudden interested silence. Even a couple of the gangsters were listening. “Why, only last year . . .”

  It was half an hour before she ran out of words. Hu was waiting to shake her hand.

  “Are you going to make a scene?” he asked softly.

  Irene sighed. “I’ll come quietly. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a drink?”

  CHAPTER 18

  “What we need is a really good way of disguising you,” Kai said. “Qing Song’s watchers will be everywhere.” He walked around Evariste, inspecting him thoughtfully. The man was of average height, with dark skin marred by an underlying pallor. His black hair was plainly and unflatteringly styled, and his face had good solid lines, with a firm jaw and strong brow. His clothing was well-made and cut to fit him, but showed the traces of too much recent wear and not enough recent washing.

  They were in another seedy hotel room, with only a limited amount of time until someone—criminals, police, or gangsters—caught up with them.

  “You’re talking as if I haven’t thought about this already,” Evariste said sourly. He sat on the edge of the bed, propping his unshaven chin on his hands. “There’s only so many ways I can change how I look. Especially when some of them have seen me face-to-face.”

  “Bandages, maybe? You could be a wounded war veteran—”

  “No recent wars in this world,” Evariste said. “Or at least none that America’s been in.”

  “I’m trying to be constructive here,” Kai said. He throttled down a flare of irritation. Evariste had been living off his nerves for weeks now. Kai would simply have to be tolerant. “We can’t change your skin colour, and your hair’s too short to restyle. We can’t disguise you as a woman . . .”

  “Wait. Hold up.” Evariste stared at him. “Were you seriously considering that, even for one moment?”

  “I’m just going through the options,” Kai pointed out. “Besides, Irene’s disguised herself as a man once or twice. Though it wasn’t very convincing.”

  “Stop trying to get me to trust you,” Evariste said. “It’s not going to work.”

  “Irene thought we could work together. Are you going to argue with her?”

  “She’s not here to be argued with.” Evariste glanced at his watch. “She’s left us to do the actual work while she goes shopping.”

  Kai was about to snarl at him for such casual disrespect, but he sensed the undertones of fear in the other Librarian’s voice. Instead he said, “You’re deluding yourself if you think that.”

  “She’s got you as cover, hasn’t she? If Qing Song gets too close, he’ll back off, because he won’t want to mess with another dragon’s property.” Evariste rolled the final word in his mouth as though he meant to spit it out.

  “That’s wrong in so many ways that I can’t even start to explain how many,” Kai said.

  “Is it? Hu said other dragons would know that I was under Qing Song’s authority—”

  “How? Because you told them? It’s not as if I can just smell him on you.”

  Evariste flinched away, then tried to make the movement look deliberate rather than nervous. “Don’t you even try it.”

  “Try what?”

  “Sniffing me.”

  Kai folded his arms and looked down at Evariste. Memories of days spent in a street gang seeped into his diction. “Lose the attitude. I’m not asking you to like me. I’m telling you to work with me. You’re a professional, aren’t you?”

  “Okay,” Evariste said. “Fine. Give your word—on whatever dragons believe in—that no dragon you know and trust would ever, ever take a hostage and blackmail someone in order to get what he wanted. Or she wanted. Let’s not be gender-specific here. And hey, let’s suppose they think they’re doing it for a really good reason. Can you promise me that none of your nice dragons would do a thing like that?”

  Every sinew in Kai’s body wanted to back-hand the insolent human across the room. He was not accustomed to being criticized like this. But instead he said, “Do you want your daughter back or don’t you?”

  Evariste looked at him for a long moment. Then he slumped back onto the bed. “Screw you and the horse you rode in on,” he said. “You know I do.”

  “Then get your head out of your—” Kai remembered that he was royalty. “Then pull yourself together and help me. You must have had a plan to get into the Metropolitan Museum.”

  “I had a plan, yes! But that was before someone seeded Museum Mile with a load of thugs who know what I look like. He may not know which museum it’s in, but he saw the early research, and he can be sure it’s in one of them.”

  Kai ignored the attitude. He couldn’t understand why Evariste was so hostile to planning the operation. “You must have done jobs like this before,” he said encouragingly.

  There was a pause. Then Evariste said grudgingly, “Not many. That is, nothing like this. The way you’re behaving, I get the impression you’ve actually done more than I have.”

  “But you’ve got the Library brand.” Kai had checked that while Evariste was still unconscious. He preferred to be certain. “You’re a full Librarian, like Irene.”

  “Some of us are better at research,” Evariste said through gritted teeth. “Disguise is not my thing. I’m not good with disguise.”

  Kai sat down on the chair. “You know, it would have helped if you’d said that earlier. Such as when we were planning this.”

  “Define ‘we.’ Irene was planning this. You were agreeing with everything she said. I just . . .” Evariste’s indignation trailed off. His voice cracked. “I didn’t have any better ideas. I just want my daughter back. I didn’t even know she existed, I spent years working at the Library without being there for her . . .”

  Kai breathed in, then out again, controlling his frustration. “Right. Let’s consider this as a military operation. Enemy forces consist of gunmen working for the local gangs, who may know what you look like.” He raised one finger. “And possibly the police, if they’ve been paid off.” Another finger. “And Qing Song and Hu—who will certainly recognize me as a dragon if they see me.” And if they thought he was after the book in order to influence the contest, then . . . well, accidents could happen. They shouldn’t. But they did.

  Evariste nodded. Fortunately he couldn’t hear Kai’s thoughts. “Yeah. Assume they’ve got a couple dozen men scattered up and down the Mile, maybe more.”

  “There aren’t any secret police round here in this time and place that we could pose as, are there?” Kai asked hopefully.

  “Nah,” Evariste said. “There’s the FBI, and the anti-drink task forces, but those aren’t quite the same thing. And if we try showing up at the door, claiming that we’re there to raid a secret distillery underneath the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not only are we going to get noticed; we’re going to get laughed out of town.”

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind,” Kai said with dignity, reluctantly putting the idea aside. “We’re going to have to get in there unnoticed . . . We could bribe our way into one of the cleaning crews and get in that way, but we haven’t the time.”

  Kai paused and looked Evariste up and down measuringly. An idea had just alighted in his head, fully formed and arrestingly plausible.

  “I’m not sure I like the way you’re looking at me,” Evariste said.

  “There may be dozens of thugs watching for you,” Kai said, “but they won’t be able to see through solid wood. I’m going to have us crated up and shipped in there as a work of art.”

  Evariste stared at him. “That’s crazy.”<
br />
  “But would it work?”

  There was a long pause. Then Evariste said, “You know, it just might.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The early-evening sounds of Fifth Avenue—and Fifty-fifth Street—drifted in through the open full-length balcony windows. The sky outside was that perfect shade of clear dusky blue that came after sunset but before true nightfall. Twilight lay like a curtain over New York, waiting to be drawn back for the evening’s entertainment. And up here, at this level above New York, one could see the sky without the buildings getting in the way.

  Qing Song was sitting in one of the suite’s large armchairs, a book open in his lap. Two of his wolves lay on either side of his chair, their heads cocked as though they’d been listening to him reading to them. The others were sprawled around the room like unusually three-dimensional rugs. “I see you found her,” he remarked to Hu.

  “Not without some difficulty, my lord,” Hu said. “One would think she was trying to take in as many landmarks as possible.”

  A thread of unease ran down Irene’s back. For Kai’s sake, she couldn’t afford for them to suspect she’d been leading them on a false trail. “Well, I’m here now,” she said coldly. “And I would appreciate it if this gentleman”—she jerked her head at the thug behind her—“would kindly point his gun somewhere else.”

  Qing Song gestured, and Irene felt the pressure of the gun leave her ribs. “Of course,” he said. “I’m glad there was no need for anything more excessive. Humans are such fragile creatures. Even Librarians.”

  Irene would have had to be deaf to miss Qing Song’s switch from courtesy to barely veiled threats. Maybe he’d decided there was no further need to hide. “We manage to get by,” she said. “Has there been any news about your stolen jade statue?”

  Qing Song closed his book. “It might surprise you to know that I was not entirely honest with you earlier.”